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End Times (A Philosophical Essay in Dub)

from Dub Rules Everything Around Me by Dub Rogue

/

lyrics

”Kids, I'm gonna tell you an incredible story The story of how I met your mother."

No no, that was something else, of course. Let me tell you instead a story of [sample] ”the end, the absolute end”. I’m thinking about the end a lot. The end of time and space. Of existence. Of life, universe and everything. Also of my end. I have the feeling that I will be mildly displeased when my existence ends.

Like a modern day philosophical scholar, I skimmed through various Wikipedia articles, and will share my half-knowledge with you in this musical essay called End Times. You’re listening to the short version which can only give you a very rough idea about things, and in no way claims to be accurate or correct. Don’t overthink it, please.

There are different approaches towards possible End Time scenarios, from religion, to science, to spirituality, to philosophy, to other fields. I know nothin’ like Jon Snow, and I try to learn more about nothin’. Should you disagree or take offense in anything stated in this song, I’m unworthy like Wayne and Garth of getting a tantrum thrown at.

There are cyclic cosmologies which assume that there is an end at some point, but this end is only the start of something new. Thus, the end equals a new beginning. In linear cosmology however, there will be an actual end to all things. When it’s over, it’s over. There is nothing coming after that. Let’s have a brief look at some of those scenarios.

In Hinduism, the end is quite near. About 4 to 8 billion years from now. Sounds a bit much from a human perspective, but for Brahma, that’s only one single day and night. When it’s time for the end, the final avatar, Kalki, arrives on a white horse and rids the world of all bad things. A new cycle begins.

In Buddhism, there is no beginning and no end, there is just Samsara, a continuing process of existence. However, the ”Sermon of the Seven Suns” predicts an apocalypse that WILL actually end existence. Seven suns will arrive in the sky one after the other and each of them will destroy a part of existence until nothing remains.

The Norse mythology is dark. I split it into two verses. The end times is called Ragnorok which means ”twilight of the Gods”. It’s a grim outlook. Sun and moon disappear. Air becomes poisenous. The dead rise from the ground. It’s a quite unpleasant experience. The Gods battle against Team Chaos and wipe each other out.

The people and deities who survived this battle will perish soon after, because Earth gets flooded, stars disappear and fire flames rise out of the water high into the sky. The few Gods who survive even this, meet and reboot the world like a superhero franchise gets rebooted after it got bought by a big media company. SAMPLE: ”Burn.”

In Christian belief, there are different versions of the end, for example the Great Tribulation, the Book of Revelation or the final Judgement Day. At some point, mankind faces a really rough time during which everything goes bad. A cleansing occurs and people deemed worthy of being saved will rise to an otherworldy place outside of our current realm of existence.

In Islamic belief, on a final day of judgement it is decided who is righteous and who is not. After that, God terminates life. Various signs indicate how near the end is. When the second trumpet is being blown, and the dead return to life while a big fire is coming from Yemen, people gather for the final judgement.

In Judaism, God ends the current, flawed world and builds a new world to come, a paradise. This happens after different events occur, amongst them the Exodus, the return to Israel, the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem, the world’s recognition of the God of Israel being the only true God, and the resurrection of the dead.

Rastafarian culture has a unique interpretation of end times as described in the book of revelation. Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie is God Incarnate, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He fulfilled the prophecy of Revelation. One day he will return and bring home the lost children of Israel, so that they find eternal peace at Mount Zion.

In ”The Gospel of the flying spaghetti monster”, which is the main book of the pastafarianism movement, it might or might not state how the end will come. If the end is like a spaghetti, it will by cyclic, without beginning and end. There is an afterlife described, and it features a stripper factory and a beer volcano.

Moving on to scientific approaches of the End of Times. Let me ask you a question first: What's the time? Not in: How late is it? But in: What is time actually? And how many dimensions does it have? Either [sample] "T'ree fiddy" or seven. Just like the amount of suns we might eventually in the sky.

Our Earth is irrelevant for astronomical times and the end of all times. Our sun is some 4 billion years old, is currently in its prime years and is frickin’ hot like that Instagram influencer you’re secretly following. But just like an outdated influencer, the sun will eventually lose its hotness and become a red giant, a white dwarf and finally, a planetary nebula.

By then, there won’t be Instagram anymore. Add some 10 trillion years on top, and the former star of our solar system will become a black dwarf forever. No more light. If you’d get old enough, you might be the first observer of a black dwarf. Of course, only if you left earth during the red giant phase, because Earth will go poof like Paulinchen who played with matches.

Before Earth will cease to exist, there’ll be the Andromeda incidence in about 4.5 billion years. Andromeda and our Milky Way will collide, and the Triangulum Galaxy might join the fun, too. And why wouldn’t Triangulum join in, it has nothing better to do. Andromeda moves towards us with a whopping 110 km per second. We’re so close.

While this might be the End Time for mankind, it’s not even closely the End Time for existence itself. That will come much later. The End of the Universe. Will it happen? And if so, how? In physical cosmology, there are a couple of possible scenarios outlined. Let’s have a quick look at some of them.

The base for physical cosmology is that there was a so called big bang some 14 billion years ago. Imagine the whole universe being as small as one millimeter or so, then bam, suddenly it grows massively big insanely fast for some reason, maybe an act of a God-like being who farted inside this millimeter, as an episode of Family Guy suggests.

And while the universe is still expanding, everything moves away from each other with unimaginable speed. The Big Freeze is a possible end to this, because eventually everything is so far away from each other that nothing can interact anymore. All fuel will be used. Everything becomes dark, empty and cold. All something becomes nothing.

The Big Rip is another possible ending. Everything drifts away from each other so far that the only remaining length is infinity. And when everything is infinitely far away from each other, there is zero interaction between anything possible anymore. When there is only infinity, everything becomes nothing. Nothing is anymore. And nothing is the end of something. Game over.

The Big Crunch says that the universe extends up to the maximum point of its possible extension and then starts deflating again up to being just a tiny millimeter or whatever, with all the universe’s content being pressed into it, and then it’s either game over for the universe if you believe in a linear cosmology, because then it’s a once-in-a-lifetime-event, or alternatively...

Boom! As the cyclic Big Bounce theory suggests, there comes a new big bang and the whole thing starts again, because the universe comes and goes in a circle. Who knows, maybe we have all witnessed the same stuff before, we just don’t remember our previous existence in the former universe. Religion. Science. It’s all about to end.

The craziest sounding theory is also the scariest: the Big Slurp. Our universe exists in a false vacuum state and it strives to become a true vacuum. I can’t explain it. But if the theory is true, this could happen any second now. No one could tell or prepare for it. We’d be gone in an instant. No compromise.

From my own point of view, any day could be the end of my existence. Thus, any day is like judgement day, and I have to try to be a good person every day of my life. Because of the end. That’s my suggestion to you as well. Can’t go wrong with that. If everyone would be good, existence would be so much nicer, no matter the end.

I’ve been pondering about my own end since I was a young teenager. It makes me sad, it makes me scared, it depresses me. One day at some point in the future, I will not exist anymore. I will never know again who wins the Bundesliga in the following season. I try to understand the concept of non-existence.

I studied philosophy to come closer to understanding non-existence. But it’s impossible, because it’s outside of our realm of existence. It’s impossible to perceive and comprehend while you’re alive. We exist. Non-existence is the opposite of that. I am something. I want to know how it is to be nothing.

Since I can only be something, this something ends, when I enter the stage of becoming nothing. I end. And I will for all eternity not be anymore. Sometimes I dream of almost understanding nothingness from within our realm of existence. Then I wake up in shock, because my heart can’t cope with such a level of clarity.

That’s why I consider dreaming a bridge between life and death. It’s almost like a limbo in between the two realms, but you can’t cross the actual border. You float in front of it. It’s not a coincidence that both, my first, and my second album are about dreams. By the way, it’s a trilogy. Expect the final chapter by 2037, if I’m still in this realm then.

With nothing on my mind, it’s no surprise that I turned out to become the person that I am. Sometimes I wonder how it would be to live a normal life. What does normal even mean? What society dictates? I’ll be me. I don’t know how to be anyone else but me. The thought of being normal is almost as scary as that false vacuum theory.

Since I try to understand the nothingness that awaits me in the realm of non-existence, one could say that I am also a believer of this nothingness. I believe. In nothing. Does this make me a nihilist? But everything I know is something and not nothing. Hmm. Back to square one, I guess.

In the myth of The Old Republic, End Times is the 8th chapter of the Knights of the Eternal Throne trilogy. It’s a dark chapter without happy ending that drags out the inevitable climax for a bit too long. It feels like a long ride on a walker through narrow pathways towards doom. The Old Republic is the realm to which I escape from real life.

To sum it up, every day of my life is part of my personal end times. From the second I was born it’s a straight path towards my demise. Every day could be the last. Every second brings me closer to not existing. It’s my own Little Slurp theory. Understanding all that begs a couple of questions though:

What’s the point in any of that?
Why continue?
44 years in, still looking for a purpose.
When at the end nothing is all that matters, what’s the point of doing anything?
Of existing?
I...

[phone rings]

Hello? Oh hi. Yeah, I’m good. You know me. Happy-go-lucky, always upbeat and cheerful, living the good life. How are you? Nice. Hey listen, I’m recording a song right now. Can I call you back in a few minutes? Yeah? Cool, cool, cool. Bye.

[Sigh.] Now, where was I? Oh well. One day I will figure it all out. At the end of my time and space. Until then, there is one thing that really matters to me, and you’d better believe it:

credits

from Dub Rules Everything Around Me, released September 18, 2021

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Dub Flash Berlin, Germany

Onward to the Andromedub galaxy since 1998. Dub and steppers from outer space. I love it. You love it. We all love it.

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